Power BI Data Visualization World Champs - Round 1 is LIVE

[slindsay]

Post updated: 12 Jan at 5pm Pacific

Power BI Dataviz World Champs - Round 1 of 3

Welcome to Round 1 of this year's Power BI Dataviz World Champs, FabCon Atlanta edition! After much anticipation, the competition begins with a challenge focused on city livability trends, featuring the fictional city of Briarport as the anchor city.

Your mission: turn data into insights that inspire action.

To help you get started, join our kickoff call on January 15 (available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese), where we’ll walk through the challenge theme, starter file, talk through some dataviz and contest best practices, and answer your questions live.

✅ Week 1: 12 January to 19 January

Analyze fictional livability metrics for Briarport and 11 peer cities across five key dimensions:

• Housing Affordability
• Transit Score
• Green Space %
• Emissions Index
• Livability Composite

Use the provided starter semantic model (2015–2024) to uncover trends, compare cities, and tell a compelling story.

📂 Starter Semantic Model

•  Week 1 Starter File (If you are having issues with the link please download from GitHub)
• Note: this file was updated at 5pm Pacific on 12 Jan. If you downloaded the file prior to this time, please download again. The city names have been updated in the latest version of the file - you should be looking at cities: Briarport, Golden Shoals, Southmere, Willowford, Prairiebend, Crestwater, Ironbar, Ashgrove, Cloudbreak, Starfall, Northhaven, Eastwick, Winterstead
  • If you downloaded the file and worked all week on it using the original city names, please submit it! Judges will take special consideration for this - as the confusion was caused by us. 

 

🎯 Audience Profile

Your report should speak to city planners, policy analysts, and community stakeholders who want to:

• Compare Briarport's performance against peer cities.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in housing, transit, green space, and emissions.
• Use insights to inform urban planning decisions and prioritize investments.

📋 Requirements

• Report size: No more than 5 standard pages (or equivalent if using a custom canvas).
• Visuals: Include at least one core visual (e.g. line chart, bar chart, scatterplot, shape map, etc.).
• Data: Use the provided City Metrics and City Lookup tables. You CAN add additional supporting data.
• Accessibility:
  • Maintain ≥4.5:1 contrast ratio
  • Provide alt text for charts
  • Avoid color-only encodings
  • Ensure logical keyboard navigation order
• Entries are due by 11:59 pm on 19 January
  

📝 How to Submit (read full article for details)

1. Publish your report to the Power BI Contests Gallery.
2. Include “Week 1:” in your post title - example: "Week 1: Housing in Atlanta remains the most affordable"
3. Select the category "World Champs ATL"
4. Add a short description of your approach and visuals.
5. Share the link in the contest thread (below this post).

Read more about submitting a great contest entry in a post from community leader and Microsoft MVP @Sahir_Maharaj!

🏆 Judging Criteria

Your entry will be evaluated on:

• Insightfulness (10 pts) – Does your report surface meaningful trends and comparisons?
• Visual Effectiveness and Clarity (10 pts) – Is the story easy to follow and well-structured?
• Creativity and Innovation (10 pts) – Are your visuals engaging and innovative?
• Accessibility (10 pts) – Does it meet the basic accessibility standards of appropriate color contrast, inclusion of alternative text, and set tab order?
  
  

👩‍⚖️ Judges

Our panel of esteemed judges includes:

• Chris Hamill is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and a leading expert in Power BI report design. With nearly a decade of experience in business intelligence and a foundation in corporate finance, Chris specializes in crafting user-centric dashboards that drive clarity and impact.
• Diana Ackermann is a freelance statistician with 15+ years of turning messy data into clear, executive-ready insights. She fell in love with Power BI building forecasting and supply‑chain reporting into a SaaS solution, and she’s been focused on practical, leadership-friendly analytics ever since. Diana judged the 2023 Information Is Beautiful Awards and now contributes to the Workout Wednesday team, all while sharing her expertise widely through conferences, podcasts, and meetups.
• Shannon Lindsay is a Program Manager at Microsoft and an analyst, BI leader, and community builder dedicated to making data visualization in Power BI both engaging and inclusive. Shannon focuses on accessibility judging for Microsoft Fabric Community Contests.

🏆 Prizes

• Finalists: Finalists will be selected each week, along with one wildcard finalist. Each of the 4 finalists will receive a FabCon ATL conference pass and 3 nights hotel accommodation in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Top entries: Top entries from all rounds will also be featured on the Power BI Community Website, giving you an opportunity to showcase your work to a global audience!
• Fan favorites: Entries with the most likes/kudos will also be featured as fan favorites!  

Ready to show your skills?

Join the kickoff call on January 15, download the starter file, and post your entry in the Power BI Community. Let’s make this finale unforgettable!

[sergilazaro]

Hi everyone!

Here’s my Week 1 submission for the Power BI Data Visualization World Champs:
👉 https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-Gallery/Week-1-Who-Really-Drives-Rivermere-s-Liva...

Feedback is very welcome!

[Abishek_Rajaseg]

Hi All,
Week1 submission: 
https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-Gallery/Week-1-Briarport-is-Affordable-but-Green-...

[gretachlipalska]

Hi all! Sharing my Week 1 entry for Briarport livability — feedback welcome!
Week 1 - Briarport Livability - Greta - Microsoft Fabric Community

[PorcuBI]

Just in time, my entry: Week 1: Briarport Livability in Regional Context 

[Little-Wolf]

Hi all, 

Here is the link to my week one entry, 

Week 1: The Benefits on Living of city planning fo... - Microsoft Fabric Community

Feedback is always welcome!

Also to the event planners what time zone are we running in as the intro info it just has: 'Entries are due by 11:59 pm on 19 January' little stressed that I would miss that so submitting it a day early for me!

[rajasali]

Hi, How did the data got changed, I got a different data on Atlanta's Livability and I submitted. 😥

[slindsay]

@Deku - if you worked on the file prior to the updates you can submit that. 

@Paruccone - the metric definitions are located on the Read Me page of the starter file - and what's provided is as much detail as we have. Feel free to add further detail! For reference: 

• City Metrics:
  • Each row represents a city in a given year (2015–2024) with five key livability metrics:
  • HousingAffordabilityIndex – Lower is better; reflects housing cost burden.
  • TransitScore – Higher is better; measures public transportation availability and convenience.
  • GreenSpacePct – Higher is better; percentage of city land dedicated to parks and green areas.
  • EmissionsIndex – Lower is better; indicates air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
  • LivabilityComposite – Higher is better; an aggregated score (0–100) summarizing overall quality of life.

@Juan-Power-bi - you can submit with the original data - this was our mistake and we'll be sure judges act accordingly.

@Little-Wolf - sincere apologies for the lack of detail! For future reference, the timezone is US Pacific time (UTC -8). Congrats on submitting early!

[Paruccone]

Hi @DataWitchShan ,

that's exactly my point: let's assume I want to allow users to see a score from 1 to 10 for every data-point for each category/city/year with 1 being lowest score and 10 highest.
That is in order to enable analytics such as:

How did City A in Category X during year 2019 performed compared to City B in category Y during 2023? Or what was the average score for City A in the decade compared to City B and C on the average of all categories?

In my business experience, these are the basics of what decision makers want to see from the data. Then it moves to what performed better and what didn't (to pull best-practices and things to avoid).

Thanks!

[slindsay]

@rajasali - that is okay! either dataset is fine 🙂 We made a change after we launched the contest and created some confusion - please don't worry!

[DataWithParker]

@slindsayIf we want to incorporate additional synthetic data to strengthen the narrative across the four categories (Housing Affordability, Transit Score, Green Space %, and Emissions Index) and city details, is it acceptable to use generative tools to create that data? The instructions indicate that adding data is allowed, but after reviewing the competition rules more closely, it is unclear whether generative tools are permitted in this case given that the original dataset itself is not based on real-world data. Alternatively, is it preferred that any additional synthetic data be created manually or derived using DAX in Power BI?

[Loic_gnt]

Hi,

I’m sharing here the link to my Week 1 entry : https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-Gallery/Week-1-City-Quality-and-Climate-Overview/...

All feedback is always welcome

[EliLerma]

Fingers crossed, good luck to everyone! Here is the link to my report.

Week 1 - RIVERMERE Livability Dynamics 

[rajasali]

@slindsayThanks, that’s a relief 😊 Really appreciate for clarifying.

[Juan-Power-bi]

this is is my entry my friends, I  hope you like it ,https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-Gallery/Week-1-Atlanta-Rising-A-Decade-of-Urban-E...

[rajasali]

Hi all,

This is my entry for Week1. Could you please have a look and give me a feedback.

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-Gallery/Week-1-Atlanta-Livability-Report/m-p/4920...

I hope you like it and thank you all for your feedback and inspiration.

Thanks and Regards

 Rajas